About Kris­ten

What part of liv­ing bliss­fully in New York and own­ing an art gallery didn’t work for me? Well, the part that was trans­ferred to Lon­don with my husband’s job… Nine years later, here we are, and I am deliri­ously con­tent to live in the sec­ond great­est city in the world (first? sec­ond?), cook­ing, eat­ing, bell­ring­ing, watch­ing our remark­able daugh­ter bring her­self up in style, and describ­ing it all here, for pos­ter­ity.

And now the cook­book is here, avail­able in the UK so far and the US very soon! To get your own copy of “tonight at 7.30: one family’s life at the table,” click here.

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What a funny week it’s been! A sort of glimpse into the future when Avery’s not liv­ing here any­more, in fact. I’ll explain.

We’ve been to Zurich, just the two of us, John and I, for a whirl­wind, exhaust­ing, excit­ing, expen­sive, deli­cious two days and two nights. What a thrill just to hop on a plane, and 90 min­utes later land in Switzer­land, a night flight, so that our walk to the hotel from the air­port was a glo­ri­ous tour of the dark­ened, but glit­tery, great city.

I can’t remem­ber the last time I was in a proper hotel — a des­per­ately awful motel at JFK the night before a flight does not count! This one, the Hotel Helmhaus in the very cen­tre of the city, was quite, quite per­fect, with gor­geous white sheets and a choco­lately soft throw, a gor­geous bath­room and fan­tas­ti­cally help­ful staff. A total lux­ury, a birth­day gift from my mother. What an escape.

In the morn­ing, we headed out to explore our neigh­bor­hood, dom­i­nated by the mas­sive Gross­mun­ster church.

The doors are dec­o­rated in a kind of 20th cen­tury ref­er­ence to the Baroque doors by Ghib­erti in Flo­rence, these dis­tinc­tively child­like depic­tions by the great Otto Munch.

Sim­ply astonishing.

And the views from the top of the tower? (We puffed.) Sim­ply glorious.

John looked so happy, sit­ting by a lit­tle inte­rior win­dow, catch­ing his breath.

Then we mean­dered over to the intensely beau­ti­ful Frau­mun­ster Church, home to a col­lec­tion of the most sub­lime stained glass win­dows by Marc Cha­gall. How I wish I could have taken pic­tures of these glow­ing, lively, cel­e­bra­tory win­dows, but such is not allowed. You must look online at how stun­ning they are, impos­si­bly col­or­ful and happy, despite the obvi­ously com­plex mes­sages within.

From these churches we wan­dered through the streets of Zurich, as quaint as a doll­house, around every cor­ner a dec­o­rated wall, a sign, a foun­tain. Here lived Goethe.

Noth­ing was ordi­nary.
What a joy to see some­thing new.
A gur­gle of water, but extra­or­di­nary.
And every­where mes­sages that I could not read. How frus­trat­ing to be such a fail­ure at Ger­man, as it happens.
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“Oh if life were made of moments
Even now and then a bad one–!
But if life were only moments,
Then you’d never you know had one.”
Stephen Sond­heim, Into the Woods
Early Jan­u­ary in Lon­don typically…

We are ensconced in the most imper­sonal, red/black/grey/silver hotel room on earth, a breath away from JFK in prepa­ra­tion for our early-morning flight tomor­row, await­ing a Domino’s pizza deliv­ery.
In short, noth­ing could…